The Invisible Truths

In Salem if you are deemed a witch you are banished from the community. On the other hand, if one confesses during the McCarthy era to communism though you may not be physically removed, we should look at it as a metaphorical removal from society through ostricization. It’s hard for me to believe that if one repented one’s communism that everyone behaved normally toward you and welcomed you with open arms. In my head it mirrors the idea of the scarlet letter painted on ones chest forever, metaphorically speaking of course. The most fervent idea that Salem and the McCarthy era have in common is the idea that everyone either belongs to either God or the devil, for the United States or a communist. It became a very black and white issue where you couldn’t have feelings in the middle about an issue or else you were considered suspicious. We can see a very strong notion of this when in The Crucible, Act III, and Danforth says “a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it.”
This sort of theme continues on with the invisibility of the crime, as Danforth calls it, and the idea that some evidence is hard proof while anything that could possibly support someone not being a witch is considered faulty or unreliable. When Danforth looks at the evidence presented of witchcraft he almost blindly trusts the children’s accounts. However, when the evidence against Abigail’s testimony against Elizabeth arrives, they are smarter about questioning its validity. It’s almost a blind faith in the accuser only if it brings someone to be charged with witchcraft. Most of this has to do with the extreme paranoia with the time period in that finding and putting someone to death would eliminate this problem of unsuspected tragedies such as sickness, death, etc. Did the people of Salem believe themselves so pious, so perfect that they became full of their own imagined godliness, enough to think themselves undeserving of misfortune, or above natural happenings? This almost seems blasphemous according to their religious statures.